EnglandThis is already known, but difficult to aim for. It also saves no time, since you hit the killplane as you fall into the goal ring anyway.
Different game then, I was thinking of the series of Flash games where you just level up the different components of whatever world you're growing.
For at least some games, this is done so as to establish consistency between RTA and IGT. For instance, in Streets of Rage 2, you select your character, but then time only begins once you gain control in Stage 1, because that's when the ingame timer starts ticking. Digimon World is another game that does this, timing begins after you've began the game, chosen your name, skipped the cutscenes and progressed the first text box.
For other games, the standards can change. QuackShot was previously done by SDA timing, and time began when you gained control in the first stage. I changed this rule when I started moderating the game and time now begins when you select New Game, because there is text progression and menuing to be done before you even get into the first stage, and the first stage you enter is arbitrary; you have a choice of where to go first. Obviously one choice is 'correct' because it's faster than the others, but it doesn't alter the fact that different runners could opt to start in different stages.
tl;dr most of the time it's situational and depends on the game. It makes sense for some games, and is completely illogical for others.
Having a split timer onscreen is NOT a requirement, whatever anyone else tells you. If a mod rejects your run because there are no splits/timer onscreen, they're not doing their job properly. The most important element of a submission is intact video and audio, and making sure the entire run is in the video, no start/end cut off.
If these are the same GROW games as I'm thinking of, there is... Absolutely no speed value to them. You're basically timing how quickly you can perform a handful of singular inputs, with a cutscene in between each one.
Would be better if he didn't almost exclusively do OoT/SM64 content. I've brought that point up a few times, get consistently ignored.
This was probably not taken seriously in the past due to the game being timed by IGT, which features no way to account for time spent in the Special Stages, but now that the game uses RTA as the primary timing method, I see no reason why All Emeralds couldn't be a legitimate category.
The problem is just getting people to actually run it. I know that some in the past have done All Emeralds on the side as a fun thing, but it's never been a competitive category that people have taken seriously as far as I'm aware.
In addition to the above point, a 'TAS' doesn't necessarily have to be a superplay or the fastest possible completion of the game. This question can be taken as "How can you be sure a runner hasn't recorded a run in an emulator with the assistance of tools, and submitted the resulting recording?" The older equivalent of this would be spliced runs, and those have traditionally been detected through analysis of the frame data and audio waveforms, detecting inconsistencies.
It's true that if someone was 'clever' enough, there would be no way to detect a tool-assisted RTA run. If somebody were to record a movie file in an emulator that wasn't perfect, but was still a 'good run', albeit still full of mistakes that made the movie look very human, it could well be indistinguishable from an RTA run. There are often telltale signs though, and instances of these sorts of runs going totally undetected are increasingly rare.
Apparently I was unjustified in accusing you of trying to get a rise out of people.
Apparently.
-How do you learn a new game? I prefer to learn who are the most well-known/'best' runners of a game, and then learn from them if they are willing. There are a lot of nuances to a game that you can't discern just from watching runs, so I prefer to learn from people if possible.
-How do you practice? Most of the games I run are SNES/Genesis-era games, which means emulator is very convenient. I'll generally have a savestate for each main stage, then practice individually. When it comes to full-game runs, I'll compare my splits to WR and see which stages I lose the most time on, which lets me know what my main areas for improvement are. From there it's a continual process of evaluating what my weakest areas of play are, and this applies to more general concepts too such as landing a specific track, overall movement, etc. I also do a lot of offline practice that nobody else sees, which contributes to some odd qualitative leaps between each of my PBs.
-Do you set goals? If so, then how? Depending on the game, my goal can be anywhere between "Get a PB" and "Get WR". For Sparkster SNES, after getting back into Normal and getting a substantial PB, I started running against WRs splits as it forced me to play as well as possible. It worked.
I also deliberately go for the riskiest strats whenever possible, as I believe the best runners are 'forged in fire' so to speak. If you're scared of trying new strats that could kill the run, you're never going to improve. I now regularly use strats in Sparkster that everyone else has been terrified of using, such as going for a quick kill on the Stage 7 boss, and it's just a matter of course for me now. Doesn't make it any less frustrating when a run does still die to it, mind.
-Do you have a personal philosophy or method? Never stop aiming for improvement. Speedrunning in my opinion is not a competition against other people (Though leaderboard ranks are a thing, obviously), but a competition against yourself. Once you're 'satisfied', you're kind of finished insofar as being able to push yourself to improve. For the same reason, I'm not content with just holding WRs, I want the times to be as good as I can manage. Look at the WR history for SNES Sparkster's Easy mode to see what I mean. My WR is currently ~12 seconds from my Sum of Best, and I still want to push it down by at least 6 seconds.
-Do you take it seriously or casually? Very seriously. It actually pisses me off when I see people treat speedrunning as a trivial matter, like submitting joke submissions for events/only running joke games/etc. Obviously people can run whatever they want and I don't harass people about it generally, but it still inwardly annoys me.
-At what point to you post your first time? When I complete my first run. I have no shame in putting a 'bad time' on the boards, largely because it motivates me to beat it so as to increase my ranking. I'm rarely happy with just leaving a poor time on a leaderboard to just sit there and remain bad.
-Do you wanna be the very best? In certain games, yes. There are others that I have accepted that I will never have first place in (QuackShot), and others, like Sparkster, where I am now very invested in being the best player, and not losing that position.
-Do you ever stop purely practicing, only playing for PBs? When you stop practicing, you stop getting better. If you think you're done practicing just because you can land the tricks and move fairly well, you're going to get overtaken by someone more driven. You'll also stunt your own ability to improve if you don't critically analyse your own play to a sufficient extent. If you have a deep understanding of your game, you should ALWAYS be able to recognise your weakesses and shortcomings, even if you're the WR holder. Are you losing frames consistently due to a bad movement habit? Fix it. Is there a skip you do that requires an elaborate setup, but it's possible that a much simpler and faster setup could exist? Find it.
-If so, then at what point do you feel that you don't need to practice? Already answered, I don't think I'll ever reach a point where I don't need to practice, because that would imply that I am a literal TAS, which I'm not.
-Do you play multiple games? Sure do, check out my profile page for a list. The more recent games are the ones I'm more interested in currently running, obviously.
-When do you decide to stop playing a game? When another one holds more interest, generally. If this means "When do you decide to QUIT a game", then that's harder to answer. I don't think I'm 100% done with ANY of the games I've ran, it's just a matter of having limited time and motivation. You can only play one game at a time, so you need to decide what you want to play the most.
-What motivates you to keep going? Lack of satisfaction with my own times. I don't believe any of my times are 'good' yet, insofar as being optimised to the point of being very difficult to beat, and that's the point I want to reach. Sparkster is the one that's closest to that point, but there's still a handful of seconds that are free to save on Easy.
-Do you go back to games that you already stopped playing? Already kind of answered above, I don't consider myself to have fully stopped playing any of the games I've previously ran.
-What motivates you to get back into a game? Taking a break often helps to re-ignite interest I once had further down the line, plus I might just need a break from whatever I've currently been running. It helps if new stuff has been found in the relevant game by someone else, as I'm interested in keeping my runs 'up to date' as far as tech goes.
"If you refuse to believe that why did you ramble across two different posts?"
Acceptance of a premise or of your sincerity is not a prerequisite of making a response to it.
As an addendum:
"we are witnessing an explosive growth in popularity that has steadily risen alongside esports thanks to the rise in popularity of video game streaming, along with events such as AGDQ, ESA and soon NASA."
You seem to be conveniently forgetting that GDQ already prohibit runners from being under the influence of ANY substance. I refuse to accept this thread is anything but a feeble attempt at baiting people.
Even if this was a serious issue/argument (And it's not, it's fucking stupid), this is based on a fallacious assumption that performance-enhancing drugs will always improve your capabilities and give you an edge over the competition, which simply isn't the case.
The analogy to real-life sports doesn't apply, because in those cases the drugs really do give you an advantage which is universal; you'll simply run faster/jump higher/whatever else. Getting hopped up whilst speedrunning won't necessarily achieve that since a lot of speedrunning tech is reliant on muscle memory. When you take something that increases your reaction times and it messes up your muscle memory, you don't perform better. You perform worse.
You could substitute 'performance enhancing drug' for anything that achieves a placebo effect of the runners performing better, such as being in a specific frame of mind, or having a lucky charm if they're of a particularly superstitious mindset. These are all things that are impossible to quantify, yet WILL make a difference on a runner-by-runner basis, as mindset and confidence are incredibly important components to performing well as a speedrunner. Since these things also give a tangible edge to specific people, you would have to lump these things in and ban them also.
Since this is a patently ridiculous thing to propose, it leads to a single logical conclusion; your original premise is also ridiculous, and people just need to gitgud.
Gadwin 1 absolutely should not be a requirement of 100%. He's not 'meant' to be beatable.
Here are Gadwin 1's stats:
Str: 999 Vit: 999 Wit: 45 Agi: 30
It's absolutely ridiculous to expect a player to fight against this. He's BARELY beatable in ReDux, and that's with higher player stats, his VIT reduced to 245, and greater access to debuffing attacks like Def-Loss having a greater effect. It's not uncommon for other games to forgo a specific objective in 100% simply because that objective is completely unreasonable, and this is Grandia's equivalent. I'm personally not even that happy about including Time Gate as a requirement as it is a pure grind that takes hours and adds nothing of value to the run, but it IS an obtainable spell, so I suppose it's technically arbitrary to claim it shouldn't be included just because it takes ages to do.
Might help to have a good run and/or be an esteemed member of the community first.
I'm in... I can't believe it. Come January, I'll be showing people what Sparkster is all about.
^ It's easy to say WRs don't mean anything to you when you don't actually hold any. It's very unlikely that people wouldn't care about their records being taken when they've put time and effort into it, specifically if they were the ONLY people to do so prior to that.
